Spoiler Alert!
5e’s Curse of Strahd contains a double entendre. While it seems as if the big bad Lord of Barovia is the curse that follows the players around, the deeper truth is that the curse is his own. He cannot leave. Barovia is his prison. A prison, mind you, that he lords over and controls completely, but even a gilded cage is still a cage.
Having just completed our run of this infamous adventure, I found an even deeper curse lying within the module – a triple entendre, if you will. This curse plays on a meta level, and hasn’t been found except by those DMs brave enough to tackle the most iconic villain in D&D:
Strahd just isn’t powerful enough to handle the heat of the epic, final battle when the players are level appropriate and have recovered the artifacts.
Now, I know that I’m going to hear a lot of DMs screaming at me that I just don’t know how to run a big bad, or that I don’t think tactically enough, or of the vaunted benefits of Greater Invisibility and Fog Cloud … I’ve looked at all of them. The fact still remains, and is understood by anyone who has actually run a party through Curse of Strahd: By the time the players have reached their epic conclusion with Strahd, they have become aware of the truths espoused in the cult B-movie They Live: 1) they have come to Barovia to chew bubblegum and kick ass and 2) they are all out of bubblegum.
So, I decided to cobble together a version of Strahd that could properly challenge and confound my party of six level 11 adventurers that reflected the true power of an ancient vampire lord.
Who is Strahd
I am The Ancient. I am The Land… In life, Strahd von Zarovich was a count, a prince, a soldier, and a conqueror… Strahd has been the master of Ravenloft for centuries now.
Curse of Strahd
These quotes from the adventure paint a vivid picture of a centuries-old undead vampire lord and former conqueror. One who controls an entire Demiplane of Dread. An ancient evil that is literally the land itself and felled the great silver dragon Argynvost, his army of knights and countless parties of adventurers.
And then they provide you a CR 15 Strahd von Zarovich.
While the published version of Strahd is absolutely a badass, especially when on his home turf and against smaller parties, he doesn’t really match up to the version that they show you on the showroom floor. Hell, he’s not even the most terrifying big bad within Barovia. If your party is inquisitive and in possession of a Greater Restoration spell, they’ll be greeted with Exethanter, the CR 21 lich making his home in the Amber Temple!
The Adventure’s Set-Up
Curse of Strahd is an adventure for characters level 1-10. To be fair, what WotC means by this is similar to their formula for CR: 4 characters of levels 1-10. As we have discussed on the show many times, adding players to the table past the traditional four requires adjustments. Action economy and power creep begin to increase exponentially.
True to form for 5e adventures, Curse of Strahd leaves the leveling of the party to the DM, whether it be XP, milestones or a mixture of both. Anyone who has run one of these adventures knows that milestone is the method that WotC seems to prefer. I can’t argue with that either: We’ve seen in our own games the benefits of the milestone system utilized in both Storm King’s Thunder and Curse of Strahd.
The recommendations set forth for the milestones within the adventure are as follows:
- Finding Artifacts: The characters gain a level when they obtain the Tome of Strahd, the Sunsword, and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.
- Defeating Villains: The characters gain a level when they defeat the featured antagonist(s) in a location, such as the hags in Old Bonegrinder.
- Accomplishing Story Goals: The characters gain a level when they accomplish something significant, such as lighting the Beacon of Argynvostholt, thwarting the druids ritual atop Yester Hill or forging an alliance with Ezmerelda d’Avenir.
Some quick addition will reveal a party that finds the artifacts and defeats the featured villains at level 15 (three artifacts plus twelve significant locations/villains.) This doesn’t even add in the story goals, which would take the party to level 18 or beyond. With this realization, a party (like mine) that wants to get everything out of the adventure will absolutely smoke the book Strahd. Which, as any DM will tell you, is totally satisfying for you and your players. The other alternative is to pick and choose which milestones are more or less important, but then you run the risk of it becoming what most people fear with milestones: DM fiat.
There are multiple versions of powered-up Strahd’s to be found on the internet, from a CR 17 (which is barely a smidge above the book version) to an absolute ludicrously powered CR 27 Strahd with an armor class of 29 (“Have fun storming the castle!”).
I chose to go somewhere between these two extremes and create my own CR 20’ish Count Strahd von Zarovich that would have enough moxie to have earned his title as the Dread Lord of Barovia, but not so immensely powerful that he crushes the party under his boot heel while sipping blood out of his crystal goblet.
CR 20 Strahd
The Dungeon Master’s Guide has an easy chart to benchmark what CR a souped-up monster should be on page 274. It takes into account six aspects of the villain, which can easily be adjusted on any monster template in your Monster Manual or adventure appendix.
The six aspects are Proficiency Bonus, Armor Class, Hit Points, Attack Bonus, Damage Output/Round and Save DC.
For a CR 20 monster, those aspects are, in order: +6 proficiency, 19 Armor Class, 356-400 hit points, +10 attack bonus, 123-140 hit points of damage output/round and a Save DC of 19.
This gives me a ballpark within which to adjust Strahd for my party of six level 11 adventurers.
The biggest changes that I made to make Strahd a bit more beefy was ramping up both his hit points and doubling the protection he gained from the Heart of Sorrow (for such a massive necromantic protection spell, 50 hit points from the Heart just doesn’t cut it.) I gave him armor (Full plate +1) befitting a former soldier, prince and conqueror that went to battle against a silver dragon. I had played with the idea of having him outfitted in his Animated Armor, so that is another option for you.
To go with the armor, I kit-bashed a proper sword for the former warrior and conqueror: a mix between a longsword of sharpness and the magical dagger, the Rakdos Riteknife from Ravnica, that I named Lament, the Impaler.
As a final buff, I allowed a skilled wizard like Strahd, who was able to live for centuries, to achieve more than being a 9th-level spellcaster, especially with the library available to him in the Amber Temple. So, I leveled him up to a 13th-level spellcaster and adjusted his prepared spell list to play with some of the spells published in Xanathar’s and Tasha’s and make him a bit more offensively capable.
So, between proficiency, armor class, hit points and damage output, this Strahd is hovering right around CR 20. He definitely had enough oomph to challenge the party and live up to his name. But, I am well aware that, as Matt Colville has said, every encounter you place before your party is a prototype.
If nothing else, his spell list is definitely more interesting.
Final Thoughts
I have made no secret of my love of Curse of Strahd. I have also made no secret of my love of using published material in my games. This was a beautiful mixture of the two.
However, using published material doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t adjust, change, retcon and homebrew when the need or want arises. This is your game, your world, your party. You can’t predict what they’ll bring to the table or the decisions that they’ll make and the game designers can’t either.
So, when the Strahd that might bedevil most mid-tier adventuring parties just doesn’t cut it, and you are kept awake at night with the idea of a CR 27 Strahd, maybe roll this guy out for a spin.
The prototype worked but I can’t guarantee that the next one won’t explode…
Until next time, heroes … LIVE THE ADVENTURE!
